ideas: on media

Blog off, you still need journalism

Blogging? Can’t see it lasting, myself. A niche medium, at best. Just ignorant folk ranting at the world, rallying the similarly prejudiced, offending the ideologically opposed, or wasting kilobits detailing the minutia of their dreary lives. Like this.

I’ve managed to enter the blogging brigade without saying what I REALLY think of blogging. It’s time we got to the point.

Particularly as more newspapers are sent to the recycling bin with fewer likely to ever be recycled into their original form; as magazines with any semblance of news are left yellowing on shelves in empty newsagents; as the atmosphere is filled with more broadcast signals than ever yet fewer and fewer people are receiving them.

Old media (or at least old media delivery models) is almost completely redundant. Is blogging the future? God I hope not. At least in its current form.

It took me too long to turn to blogging via this fledgling platform. I thought it was destructive to what I do of a day. To journalism. I still do, to some extent, but within the context of concern over the future of journalism and the misguided belief of some that we can now somehow live without it.

Blogging, to me, has become the new Op-Ed page. It is people with often considerably more authority and expertise than the exclusive group of writers with access to newsprint, free of the organisational structure and inherent bias in Big Media, who can provide opinion and analysis on the big and not-so-big issues. As a tool of free and democratic media, as a device of community and global engagement, it is a phenomenal social movement.

Like Op-Ed writers, we have bloggers who share our ideals and prejudices (or who so violently oppose them we’re compelled to read anyway) and we follow their every word. Like Op-Ed writers, the best get behind issues and offer unique insight. The really great writers prosecute an argument rather than espouse tired ideology. Many are essential reading.

But it’s digital Op-Ed, is all. A style of journalism, perhaps, but not traditional news reporting.

As a media junkie I have become quickly addicted to industry writer and academic Margaret Simon’s new blog The Content Makers. Margaret has amassed an impressive list of exclusives during her fledgling blogging foray. She attacks issues as a journalist; she puts in the calls and she breaks stories as a result. She also injects her own colour and opinion into the writing. She has established herself as an authority on media issues and her like-minded audience is completely engaged.

In a recent post on how blogging is changing journalism, Simons argued blogs cut out the middle man and journalists had to respond by asking the audience “what they want to know about”. As a media consumer, I responded:

Call me a traditionalist. But I actually still want to read impartial news journalism. The who, what, where, why, when, how, etc. Call me crazy. I don’t actually see blogs delivering this. At least I haven’t found one. Plenty of blogs – such as this fine example, an absolute favourite – break news. But it’s different writing. It’s delivered with opinion, generally. Which, if you like the blogger, is terrific. But traditional news writing is still my first port of call – whether that is online or in print. Bloggers, for me, generally, are a value-add.

The irony of new media, of course, is so much of it is reliant on old media; on traditional news reporting from traditional news organisations. So much of what gets blogged and Twittered and Facebooked and MySpaced and Tumblred and all the other platforms of social and self-media links to an article on a website carrying traditional journalism (and probably originally written for print products).

WHO’S REPORTING THE NEWS?

See, someone still has to REPORT the news. What would Google News aggregate without newspapers and their online companions? What on earth would bloggers talk about without traditional media?

The really zealous citizen journalist believers will tell you social media allows everyone to report news from their own backyard. True. But are they applying the same journalistic principles which, at least in the best way we yet know how, put events into some sort of context, avoid potentially damaging inaccuracies or incomplete pictures, and report free of personal prejudice?

Bloggers aren’t reporting the news. Very few publications in the online space are, in fact. Two examples from the United States:

The Huffington Post has become a powerfully influential online publication – a super-blog – particularly in the political space. It broke news on the recent US election campaign – notably the scoop on Barack Obama dissing small-town voters who “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion” – but in many ways it is a most traditional blog. It is opinion or reporting slanted by the author’s take. The hard news on its website comes from traditional news wires.

The there’s Politico, the model that many are hoping will lead the way on new-media journalism. It too broke news during the campaign: one interview captured a forgetful John McCain unable to recall how many houses he owned, and its reporters broke a trivial yet damaging story on Sarah Palin’s subsidised wardrobe. Politico hires ‘real journalists’ (and bloggers, frankly, need to stop taking offensive to that phrase and accept journalism is an actual profession with a specific skill set). Their reporters joined the media packs on the campaign buses and planes; they are stationed in the press galleries of the White House and Congress; they follow stories day-to-day to impartially REPORT news. Dozens of journalists, in fact – the list of credits on the website is one of the most encouraging sights for anyone interested in the survival of journalism in a paperless world.

They’re both great websites. They both have a place in the journalism sphere and in public debate. But one of them reports news. The other doesn’t. It’s an important distinction.

The best example in Australia is Crikey. Its e-mail newsletter remains essential reading most days. It has beat the pack to its fair share of scoops, or at least shone a light on topics Big Media couldn’t find or didn’t care about. But it doesn’t write news. Not in the traditional sense. It’s more of this digital Op-Ed. And that space is becoming very crowded very quickly.

If Eric Beecher, the admirably passionate owner of the independent Crikey platform (and other ventures like Business Spectator), really cared about the future of journalism in new-media he’d embed real journalists around the place and really give Big Media something to worry about. Break open the REAL concentration of media held primarily by two print companies, a few commercial broadcasters, two public broadcasters and one wire service – the concentration in hard news reporting.

It’s incredibly expensive, of course, supporting the hundreds of journalists required to cover the usual beats. But this is the ball game. This is where media really forms an important tenant of democratic society and all those other worthy things journalists like to talk about (because they’re true). This is about making work good old-fashioned, making-calls, shoe-leather-destroying, deepthroats-in-carparks hard news reporting.

Again I ask, who’s doing that online right now? Not bloggers.

Perhaps Politico is the model – smaller teams of journos reporting niche areas like politics, providing free, advertising-supported content. Hopefully News Limited and Fairfax and the rest of Big Media convert more of their advertisers to online platforms to support a similar level of journalism – and it will probably have to be offered for free – in the online space. (These companies may be dinosaurs in a digital age, but it’s vital as the ONLY commercial organisations supporting large-scale and investigative journalism they survive and thrive into the future). Or maybe blogging really is the answer – reporters, citizen and by-trade, running around with netbooks and video cameras reporting news. It’s an exciting prospect for journalists, either way.

But here’s the point: while newspapers are dying, as broadcasters lose their reach, with old media on its last legs, it is traditional news journalism that must, and will, ultimately survive. Publishing to whatever medium the future brings.

Because ignorant ranting from bloggers like me just isn’t going to get it done.

© 2009 importance of ideas….